


Burning Paperwork (And Hoping the Smoke Signals will Send Help)

by CGKrows



Series: Emergency Fire Exits [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trans, Angst, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Beards (Relationships), Being LGBT+ through the decades is very confusing, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Body Dysphoria, Body Modification, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, California gang culture, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming of Age, Creepy Alexander Pierce, Darcy Lewis Feels, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Darcy Lewis's Taser, Darcy Lewis's iPod, Darcy Lewis-centric, Darcy is a California girl, Darcy is a Sugar Momma, Darcy is the strangest guide to the future Steve's ever had, Domestic Avengers, Everyone Needs A Hug, Father Figures, Gang Violence, Gay Steve Rogers, Gun Violence, HYDRA Trash Party, Horse Jokes, Human Disaster Clint Barton, Identity Issues, Impulse Control, Knitting, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Gets a Hug, Loki Redemption, Loki unwittingly saves the Winter Soldier, Multi, My sense of humor is ironic and ridiculous, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Nick Fury Knows All, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Thor: The Dark World Compliant, Pansexual Tony Stark, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Protective Tony Stark, SHIELD is terrified of Darcy's computer skills, Sacramento is a liberal hick city, Somewhat complaint to WS, Soul-Searching, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Stockton is scary, Tags Contain Spoilers, The Avengers (2012) - Freeform, The Avengers Tower is a Frat House, The Avengers are a Mess, The Other is the main bad guy in Avengers, Trans Character, Unethical Experimentation, because Darcy likes to put fridge magnets on it, because health concerns, or at least they try to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-01-15 12:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12321357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CGKrows/pseuds/CGKrows
Summary: Darcy Lewis is a contradictory force created from cleverness, a lack of hesitation, shitty humor, and a partially problematic love for kitschy crafts. She was somewhat lost on the long road of existence, like any chaotic force scrambling to find an outlet, and tried to pick something for a college major so she could get her life going in some sensible direction. Her mother always did say that plans saved lives, Darcy recalls, as if the forty-five year old housewife was the reincarnation of Captain America and that wholesome, outdated propaganda would somehow persuade her into becoming a functional person.Of course, even the best laid plans often go awry, and it’s no different for Darcy. Norse gods are real, SHIELD is surprisingly intimidated by her computer skills, cyborgs are extremely depressing creatures, and the path to discovering herself is littered with dangerous obstacles.(In which sexuality and gender are hard to figure out, real people make a lot of mistakes, and being friends with troubled superheroes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be)





	1. From Stockton, California to Puente Antiguo, New Mexico

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t even know, guys. The gushy happy Darcy stuff got to me and I was possessed to write something action-packed and serious while simultaneously quirky/soul-searching. Also, fuck standards for beauty and sexuality.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy Ann Lewis is a Californian. Enough said.

Stockton, California was someplace best described as _terrifying_ and _generally dismal_.

There was a big horse track in the Kennedy neighborhood, close to East Charter Way. It was famous for its mule races, with people coming in from all over the state to enter their sterile hybrid animal and hopefully sell it to a questionably insane mule rancher that probably paid veterinary geneticists serious money to breed racing mules. But most of the time though, there were horse races. Five or so would be going on all at the same time, as there were exactly five small racing circuits. When the serious championships were held in Kennedy, they’d lock up some parts of the small circuits and open doors in other spots to create one large track out of five small ones. 

(Darcy vaguely remembers when some rich farmer’s son from Woodland had taken her there a few times to watch the races and eat greasy vending food. He had been a great guy in a nerdy way, but a horrible kisser.) 

If one left the horse track, passed Williams Brotherhood Park, and drove straight down South Airport Road, there’d be a poorly-marked sign indicating the turnoff exit for Stockton Metropolitan Airport, jokingly called “the ghetto airport” by some snobby Sacramento folk. If one turned off South Airport Road and took Arch Road, they’d dead-end into the local prison and juvenile detention center. The San Francisco Naval Communication station was right on the San Joaquin River, amidst the Seaport neighborhood. Stockton was one of the few Gold Rush era cities that wasn’t named after a Native American or a Spaniard, which was very ironic; historically, it used to be the trade hub for Californian Natives before contact with outsiders. It had the oldest college in California, it was the thirteenth largest city in California, and the seaport was one of its greatest marketable features.

But really, that was only covering the supposedly charming aspects of the city.

It was otherwise a horrible concrete pit of auto theft, ramshackle homes, and a public school system without any type of funding. Unemployment was rampant before the 2008 economic meltdown, and it only got worse afterwards. Cost of living was shit too, not to anyone’s surprise. Anybody with a brain in their heads but lacked a desire to leave the city holed up in the only decent neighborhood, Brookside. Of course, it was already full to the brim with high middle class white families, so such delusions of grandeur were honestly foolhardy.

And yet for whatever reason, Nancy Eleanor Lewis determinedly stayed in her termite-eaten house two blocks away from the Highway Five overpass with her two children and no husband for years.

Seaport, much like the rest of the city, wasn’t a great neighborhood to raise two ever-curious children like Darcy and her elder brother, Wyatt. Their neighbors on the left of them, Darcy remembers, were drug dealers. Their upstairs rooms were, for all intents and purposes, a den for their customers to shoot up in what little privacy the threadbare lace curtains offered them. She quickly learned what cocaine and meth were at the ripe age of six after her mother found a collection of used needles in her room and rushed her to the hospital to get tested. It was a less than pleasant experience, and Darcy was not allowed to collect found objects anywhere in the area. The neighbors on the right were the extended family of a key gang member in the Stockton territory. He came by more than a few times a week, smoked on the porch, watched his nephews stumble around on the half-dead lawn. His compatriots discussed business next to him, shared his beers, talked about the annoying habits of their rivals. Darcy learned more curse words and slang terms from listening to them than she could on her own. The environment didn’t seem safe at all for the only white kids within a five block radius, at a glance.

And yet, it disturbingly _was_.

Jezzie, the gangster with the gold cargo around his neck and tattoos for miles, always made sure every person in town knew _not to fuck with those Lewis kids, yeah?_ His nephews often came over for birthday parties and sleepovers when the gang would meet at the house next door, and any hint of a needle on the dealers’ front lawn was quickly removed from sight ever since that needle collection incident. When Nancy’s car wouldn’t start, Jezzie would have his brother Will take her kids and his nephews to school. If Wyatt needed his bike fixed or Nancy’s air conditioner broke, Mr. Urquidez from across the street would offer to fix it in exchange for Nancy’s famed raspberry tart.

It went unspoken for many, many years, but the policy was clear: No dead or maimed white kids, no cops.

And then Darcy was a teenager, and everything was just a mess. Wyatt was a senior, she was a sophomore, and her body seemed to explode. She wasn’t that tomboyish little girl who could tromp around with Sammi and Dylan, Jezzie’s nephews, wearing a too-big Transformers shirt and a bright pink tutu like it was the latest fashion. Darcy had sensitive hips, an aching set of ovaries, and a chest that seemed hard-set on becoming a pair of balloons. Really nice, but horribly uncomfortable balloons. Everything felt... wrong. Nothing seemed to feel right. Her skin didn’t seem to fit her bones correctly, her physical form serving as a questionable misplaced inheritance. It couldn’t be her body anymore. Some evil gremlin must have made off with hers, that had to be it. 

“It’s just a part of growing up, Mister Darcy,” her mother teased, tapping an index finger on the teen’s nose, “The body’s just got to figure itself out. And, so do you.”

Darcy didn’t really believe her, grumbling into her fruit loops with the foul words drowned in discolored milk. She didn’t want breasts necessarily, but she liked jewelry and makeup and pretty dresses that hugged those foreign curves perfectly. She admired her brother’s lean physique with an envy that she struggled to puzzle into words. Darcy liked her hips and legs, even if they seemed all too sensitive during those bloody times of the month. Putting them in stockings, slipping on boots, knitted ankle warmers. But there was something out of place, and the teenager didn’t know how to fix it.

So she didn’t even think to hesitate. Darcy experimented with everything. If something seemed to fit into her life, it was seen as a possible solution to her feelings of wrong; simple as that. She tried retro fashion she bought from second-hand stores, baggy men’s clothes from Jezzie, and goth for a week from a creepy costume store in Kennedy. Darcy liked good strains of weed, hated the thick smoke of tobacco, never went near any serious drugs. Nerdy boys were nice, jocks were tools, Dylan was her first time, and Patti Martins had been a really nice month of dates at Denny’s and finger-fucking in the girl’s locker room. She definitely liked sex. She pierced her ears, wore studs shaped like baby elephants, painted her nails gunmetal blue, wore men’s velcro flip flops on lazy days, discovered the Women’s Knitting Society near the civic center. Darcy learned to weave, knit, crochet, sew, hem, collage, bejewel. James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes was the coolest historical figure to write an entire junior research project on _ever_ , and Steve Rogers was more interesting on a long term political scale than he was in black-white propaganda films. She started a knitting club in her senior year of high school, loved big cozy sweaters that could hide her boobs, knit caps, scarves, sturdy sports bras, and computers. Damn, did she _love_ computers. Myspace was beyond cool. The DMV had the shittiest firewalls.

But Darcy still hadn’t found a solution to that constant nagging sense of misplacement. It wasn’t as loud, maybe somewhat more appeased. It was a coffee table puzzle with a thousand pieces involved, and she’d only put together perhaps thirty of them in the far right corner. How did all the other pieces come together?

But all too soon, the young woman was feeling pressured to apply to colleges and use her 3.8 GPA to get somewhere in life. Jezzie, Nancy, Wyatt, Dylan, Sammi… they all expected it of her. Achieve, spread your wings, fly out of Stockton and off into young adulthood! _Leave this shithole city_ was a short sentence left unspoken.

All she felt like doing was chop off her back-straining breasts, and lay on her bed in nothing but a pair of boxers she stole from Wyatt’s room. From there, she’d chew on one end of an unlit blunt and hack Paypal so she could add a few more zeros to her account and buy herself a mint condition vintage Bucky Bear on eBay.

So, really, if the extremely rare collector’s item ended up delivered to the Lewis doorstep and Nancy asked why it was purchased, she was going to plead temporary insanity and poor impulse control.

Then responses from those universities came back, many negatives, but one surprisingly positive. Culver University wanted her, had a scholarship all lined up for her. Darcy hadn’t really put down a major she desperately wanted, just something that would be easy to write plenty of drivel for, but apparently Culver’s people liked what they saw. Bless James Barnes for making history an interesting subject. She kissed the vintage bear on its embroidered black nose in thanks before shipping her ass to West Virginia. Her elder brother took time off from his own college classes to help move her, and Jezzie’s crew were also happy to grab a few trucks to haul her across country.

But college was an altogether pointless exercise in patience and intelligence. Darcy took some history classes, but mostly classes about politics throughout the ages or World War II. She took her general education classes, but she didn’t like any of them more than the rest. Yet again, she started a knitting club. By the time Darcy was into her second year, there were over sixty members in her college knitting bee. She hated the ideals and government rulings of America, but still slept with the Bucky Bear tight in her arms with a reprint of an old Howling Commandos poster hanging over her bed. She opened a credit line and a checking account with an international bank under a fake name, hacked it, and turned what was three thousand dollars into thirty-three million dollars by adding an extra three and some zeros. Her modifications were untraceable and unnoticed. Shortly upon finishing the hack, she invested a good part of it into stocks for Stark Industries and a few renewable energy companies.

Darcy may have hung out with too many druggies in her dorm on the account of it being a familiar atmosphere and desperately missing her old neighborhood despite it all. She may have also hung out with too many strange people in general, because she had a growing knife collection, learned how to handle an assault rifle, and illegally owned a Serval for nearly three years. She fucked her way through the entire football team, and then dated a kinky Foreign Literature major for nearly a month. Darcy figured out her real problem, with her disgust at her body and the growing number of health problems she was developing. She was on the hunt for a good surgeon. She still finger-fucked girls in doorways and on futons, bought clothes second-hand, and wore silly earrings.

Darcy Ann Lewis stumbled through life like a drunk wearing stilts with a perpetual death wish.

“You need to get your shit together, Darce! You can’t just keep drifting through life, taking just enough classes to keep your scholarship, and waste another year. Sit down and plan, honey! Plans save lives!”

The woman hung up on her mother shortly after that, only to get a call from Jezzie’s buddy from the gang, Marcus, an hour later.

“Kid, I know yer’ Mam’s drivin’ herself mad with worry about ya’ an’ how college is goin,’ but take it from me: it’s betta’ to move forward than just… ya’ know, stay trapped in one place. Jezz has been talkin’ bout how much ya’ love all that political bullshit; ever thought about gettin’ yer’ degree ‘innat?”

Darcy hung up on him too, perhaps too wrapped up in emotions and irrational thought, but knew the man was right. Dragging school out for four years wasn’t getting her anywhere, and her roomie was about to move out with his Serval. The Bucky Bear was staring at her with a judgemental gaze from her bed, and playing around with renewable energy stocks could be done past college. There weren’t any surgeons that passed her high standards in the area, and she wasn’t going to be content until she had that situation in hand. Her metaphorical coffee table puzzle wasn’t going to solve itself if she stayed where she was. So the woman sat down, got a pad of paper, and counted up her units and fulfilled classes. By the end of the quarter, she’d have enough units to graduate. That was good news! But—

“Six credits... Six credits!? Fuck, _really?!_ ”

Then she was angry. Said fury lead her to stress buy five expensive pairs of shoes and a basket full of alpaca yarn, then search the class catalog for anything that could fulfill her lack of six science credits. 

And that was how she found Jane Foster’s listing for an internship, a desperate email pleading her case was sent, and three days later she found herself shipped off to New Mexico.

* * *

Puente Antiguo, much like Stockton, was someplace best described as _generally dismal_ but also _too fucking Small Town for words_.

The heat wasn’t too different from her hometown, and the dry stretches of nothing weren’t too strange either. The drive to Los Angeles was equally as desolate, when compared to the drive from Albuquerque’s crowded airport to Puente Antiguo, if not with more cacti included. There wasn’t any kind of horse track or hangout for rowdy teenagers, covered in graffiti and drowned in dust. There were crappy cowboy get-togethers and an endless number of ice coolers full of cheap beer. The only crowd Darcy liked was the non-English speaking one, where all that was involved included fry bread, enchiladas, sheep herding, and an entertaining combination of Diné and Spanish. Hanging out with that crowd improved her language skills. She just had to commit to driving out of town with them to the reservation, which was a more grueling drive than driving from Albuquerque to Puente Antiguo.

Either way, Jane Foster was a spritely, pretty woman that possibly had as serious a death wish as Darcy did. She subsisted off of poptarts, black coffee, and Mexican takeout when she managed to remember to eat. She’d go on science binges in her lab for almost a solid week before viciously crashing on their crappy futon. Jane never had a consistent shower schedule, was hard-put to launder her dirty clothes, and only emerged from her lab for electrical parts, coffee grounds, and food. Her mentor, colleague, and father figure often visited for long stretches of time. He, Dr. Selvig, was thankfully more put-together than Darcy’s boss. He drank anything caffeine without complaining, happily went to bed at nine o’clock without fail, did his laundry, and was generally a functioning human being. 

So, in truth, Darcy Lewis’ job was to turn her hot mess of a boss into a person. Which, to be honest, was a thankless task with shit pay and a distant promise of six college credits at the end of the metaphorical tunnel. Thankfully, Darcy did have plenty of money in terms of stock investments and hacked internet bank accounts. Or, to be more precise, way too much. She burned off a decent sum of it refurnishing the lab building, ordering food off Amazon Prime that delivered her the goods from their warehouses in Albuquerque, and maintaining a reasonable supply of coffee beans in the kitchen. Darcy color-coded and alphabetized Jane’s notes, typed them up on the computer, kept the workspaces organized, and made sure there were at least three fire extinguishers within easy reach.

Apparently, Jane Foster was not to be trusted when she was running on an hour of sleep and four shots of 5-Hour Energy.

All the while, Darcy’s cooking skills improved as she attempted to please Foster’s strangely specific palette. The woman, since she constantly forgot to eat, often needed to be tempted into eating. Thus Darcy took up cooking with more fervor than was standard, and worked hard to keep Jane well-fed and watered. The laundry was always taken care of halfway through the day, and there was always a pot of coffee available. There were days when Darcy drove out to Albuquerque to see her doctor and talk over her health options, but thankfully Selvig was kind enough to watch Jane for her. When she came back, it wasn’t long before Jane drove out into the desert with her jerry-rigged equipment, studying the stars and space-involved phenomena. Life in Puente Antiguo was—strangely enough—bearable.

Darcy could survive four more months of desert life and science. Her surgery was sometime in early July, and Jane was happily doing her work with a slightly more healthy lifestyle.

Until she was thrown a curve ball completely out of field, from someplace far, far away.

 

… And, _apparently_ , involving muscular blonde Norse gods.


	2. Meeting a Would-Be Alien Sex Doll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy meets and subsequently tases Thor, better known as the "Would-Be Alien Sex Doll." Pasta is made, and mugs are killed in the name of one God's like for coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to the commenting people on this fic from NorCal or formerly from NorCal: it’s nice to know there are fellow NorCal people reading my story and giggling at it.

Darcy Ann Lewis’ first encounter with an Asgardian was not epic or exceptionally theatrical. She’ll admit her retellings of it were pretty dramatic, if not hilarious in some ironic fashion, but the actual face-to-face meeting hadn’t been in the slightest.

It was, she recalls, about three weeks before her scheduled surgery in Albuquerque. Jane had been collecting insane amounts of ground-breaking data on recently occurring spatial anomalies. Erik was going crazy over it, declaring the strange space events impossible and “a one in a billion event.” Darcy never professed herself to be much of a science nerd, enjoying political and computer-involved sciences instead of stuff involving psychics, but she was smart enough to understand that the senior scientist was probably right. Jane was too wrapped up in the excitement of new discovery to really think about it all.

So every other night, the trio drove out into the desert and sat studying spatial fluctuations in correlation with subtle aurora boreali (or whatever they were babbling over) until about one o’clock in the morning. Any time later than that meant battling with the Sun, which Jane cursed at on a nightly basis. Darcy, meanwhile, committed herself to crafting tasteful playlists on her refurbished iPod and knitting. On a rare occasion, she’d drag a few academic history books with her. Reading about theories on whether Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were gay for each other back in the 1930’s never ceased to interest her. She was also the scientists’ equivalent to a chauffeur, though the California girl thought they were three marbles short of a full bag to let her have such a role. Her driving skills were on par to her bicycle skills: hap-hazard and extremely fast-paced. Nancy Lewis called her daughter a lead foot for a very good reason.

Either way, Darcy had been under the impression her night wasn’t going to be anything beyond the normal. Sure, the spatial anomalies were getting “energetic” and Jane was collecting data faster than she could process it into coherent notes, but everything was going to go as planned. Then in three weeks, Darcy would take some time off to get her breasts removed. Her back would thank her, her body would be rejoicing, and she’d feel like a new person. Understandably feminine, with her curvy hips and soft legs, but also masculine enough to look good in tight shirts and accentuate her wide shoulders. Her medical expenses would definitely be lower after the surgery. She’d shuffle some stocks, set aside some money exclusively for buying herself a new wardrobe, and get ready to take on the world by the time her internship was up. Graduation would be a breeze! Her mother would be thrilled. If anything, after all was said and done, maybe Darcy would go into technology and invest in a startup someplace in Silicon Valley; she had the money and the computer science smarts for it. If Mark Zuckerberg could make it big as a dropout from Harvard, then she could probably do the same with an education...

But Jane was abruptly yelling at her to _punch it, Darce!_ The beautiful, desert night sky was changing colors like an indecisive chameleon. And, to finish the evening with a bang, said mesmerizing light show decided to erupt into a _rainbow tornado of fucking doom_. Darcy, rationally not wanting to die for six measly college credits and not live to see Dylan get married to that one girl from Roseville, turned the steering wheel with manic fervor. Jane, lost in the thrill of videotaping her science discovery and determined to win her sciencey prizes, screamed at her in complete frustration. The astrophysicist also thought it was wise to wrench the wheel without warning, sending their jeep straight through the tornado. Darcy was screaming. Selvig was nearly thrown out the back doors of their speeding automobile. Jane was grinning like Dr. Frankenstein probably had when watching his monster jolt to life. Dust and sand flew through the air, buffeting their vehicle and obscuring the rainbow light show in a thick haze. A ear-splitting boom, followed by a unnecessary flash of white, shook them all to the bone.

And in that haze, not seen until the last second, was a large figure.

Which Darcy—thanks to Jane’s actions—promptly ran over at eighty miles an hour, kicking their wheels up and then sending the jeep spinning out of control. The tires screeched, squeaking for five beats, and then jostled to a standstill. The car lurched back onto its proper axis. Jane snapped her camcorder closed, hair stuck to her open mouth, while Selvig huffed out a breath. Darcy kept gripping the wheel, eyes darting about. She’d been in enough altercations when she was in high school to know better. _Don’t let your guard down, or you might get knifed. Or T-boned by another car. Or that psychotic farm hick Mark Anderson will attempt to assault you for briefly dating your black neighbor. Or something._ Her eyes eventually connected with her boss’ shocked gaze, before all of them scrambled to exit the car. Flashlights were procured and switched on, searching for what might be the first person Darcy killed in her entire life.

_Jezzie’s gonna kill me, oh shit, I’m gonna be sent to prison for gang-related manslaughter just like his other brother, oh fuck—_

Breathing a little too fast and scrambling unsteadily ahead, “I think that was legally _your_ fault!”

Jane didn’t bother answering her intern, rushing ahead and immediately locating what looked to be a very large, unmoving body.

“Get the first aid kit!” the astrophysicist demanded.

Darcy huffed a breath, aiming her flashlight at the bulky body on the ground. She saw a mildly scuffed up man, long blonde hair, and insanely impressive biceps. For a moment, the California girl was just impressed. She admittedly liked her men like she liked her burgers: _hella’ beefy_. Well, hella’ beefy and a serious twink, better referred to as a twonk. There was something seriously great about shoving a big brawny person around in lacey underthings she just couldn’t accurately translate into words.

Yet reality kicked in, and the woman scrambled to the jeep, yanking their first aid kit out of the back and rushing over to Jane’s panicked form. Selvig stood by, shining his larger flashlight down at the mystery man.

“Do me a favor and don’t be dead,” Jane spat out, leaning over the body and pressing her hands at the fellow’s ribs, head, arms without reason.

Darcy, in comparison, already had the first aid kit open and shoved Jane out of the way. “Not helping, Janey,” she said, “Though I won’t stop you from performing CPR on the guy, because that would probably be extremely—”

“Focus, Darcy!”

“I can multitask, thank you!” she yelled back, watching the stranger sluggishly flail in the dirt as she clinically checked for broken ribs, fractured ulnas, and any sort of concussion.

As her hands probed at his head, praying that they wouldn’t have to act out a poor rendition of _While You Were Sleeping_ , the man’s eyes snapped open. He flailed wildly, hitting her—in the fucking **chest,** the dick—and flopping away from Darcy’s touch. The blonde growled like a mangy dog, clawing at the ground in a desperate attempt to stand. His eyes were a disturbing blue, brighter than any blue-eyed boys she’d ever have a pleasure of meeting.

 _Those irises are_ literally _electric blue_.

The three of them stayed clear of the stranger as he huffed and grunted, watching him grapple to his feet. He was growling again shortly after, standing well over six feet and shuffling agitatedly. Darcy didn’t like his body language and dipped a hand into her jacket pocket, grasping her taser.

The unknown man grunted, shaking his head, before growling out. “ _Hammer_.”

Darcy moved closer to Jane, huddling her close. She knew emergency protocol. Selvig stood with uncertainty, still holding his flashlight, not getting with the game. His face expressed his growing fear of the agitated wall of muscle seemingly pacing before them.

Another, louder demand escaped the guy. “Urgh, _Hammer!_ ”

“Yeah, we can tell you’re hammered, dude. That’s pretty damn obvious,” Darcy blurted thoughtlessly, though the way she was standing said otherwise. _How did this guy manage to stand?_ He was perfectly fine with no broken bones, huffing and growling like an angry drunk, after being hit full-on by a jeep.

But of course, Jane quickly became distracted by something she spotted on the ground. And, consequently, pulled away from Darcy.

“Erik, look! We have to record this before it changes,” she babbled excitedly. Out of nowhere. Then Selvig was distracted, and Darcy was the only one still watching the crazy guy.

And her mother thought she had a short attention span.

“ _Heimdall! HEIMDALL! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME, OPEN THE BIFROST!_ ”

The California girl absently noted he had a really bizarre accent. It wasn’t exactly British, but it was definitely something similar to some of the exchange students she’d met at Culver. European? He also had a serious pair of lungs.

“Jane, we should take him to a hospital,” Erik spoke, no longer staring at the strange burn marks in the dirt. He was, thankfully, attempting to reason with her.

The astrophysicist glanced up briefly before looking back down at the ground. “Hospital. You go. I’ll stay.”

Mystery man chose that moment to look around, eyes locking onto Darcy. Suddenly he was in motion, striding towards her. “You, what realm is this? Alfheim, _Nornheim?!_ ”

Darcy didn’t like his raising voice, and promptly stopped being cautious. Her taser was out, in her hand, the laser sight on, and its small flashlight extensions also on. The normal flashlight was in the other hand, both pointed at the blonde.

“More like New Mexico. Now, fuckin’ calm down.”

His eyes seemed to brighten further as his face contorted in anger. “You dare threaten me? _Thor?_ You are so puny of a—”

She pulled the trigger.

The needles shot out, lodging themselves into his left breast a little above his sternum. His jaw jerked, body seizing. Darcy swore she could see the electricity visibly dance in his too-bright eyes. She held it for five seconds before releasing the trigger. He collapsed. The pair of scientists stared open-mouthed at her.

“What?” she shot out, “The dude was freaking me out! I told him to calm down and he didn’t! Cause and effect!”

* * *

Because Erik was a good person and Darcy didn’t want to go to prison for attempted manslaughter, all three of them had dumped the blonde in the back of the jeep. They went to the hospital. Jane had put up a weak protest, wanting to continue studying the weird burn patterns in the middle of the desert, but Erik summarily overruled her. Darcy was relieved. Admitting the strange blonde hunk at the hospital, however, was the hard part.

“Name?”

“Uh, well… He said it was Thor,” answered Jane, making a bit of a face at the nurse behind the desk.

The nurse stared in puzzlement at Jane, nose scrunching, but carefully typing out the very short name. Apparently the lady didn’t have any background in mythology.

“And your relationship to him?”

Jane’s eyes went wide and looked slightly manic. “I’ve never met him before.”

“Until she hit him with a car—” Darcy started to interject.

“I only grazed him.” Jane stared pointedly at her intern.

Darcy stared back before mouthing _I’m not going to federal prison for you_.

“And she tasered him,” Jane decidedly added, a final nail to Darcy’s coffin.

Darcy, without any hope of escaping her fate, chose to smile. “Yes, I did.”

It had been a very good shot.

The nurse didn’t react. “Well, that must have been quite a spat.”

All three of them promptly laughed nervously.

“Yeah, well, I told you I don’t know him,” Jane said, “I just… want to make sure he’s okay.”

The nurse nodded slowly, but still asked for a contact number. Darcy thought it was justifiable karma. Not long after, they were thankfully allowed to leave. Upon parking in front of their lab-living space, Darcy fell into her bed and didn’t plan to wake up until very late.

Come the next day, however, things got interesting. When she woke up, there were precisely twenty text messages from seven different people. Five of them were her Native friends that worked around town, and two of them were the weird old cowboys that liked to drink at the only bar in Puente Antiguo. The messages were… well, erratic.

_One of the ranchers found a hammer on his plot. He can’t move it._

_The gringos are at their shit again. Bobby wanted to crash their party for the booze._

_Have you seen the trucks driving off today, D? Have you heard why are they all heading to Vern’s plot?_

_Tim came to the bar and said there’s a good old fashioned hoedown happening on Vern’s land. You gonna come?_

_Jerry says there’s cheap beer flowing. Wanna join?_

_Dude, the government just whipped out a warrant on Vern._

_THE MEN IN BLACK ARE HERE._

_You should see this suit, D. He’s got a near domehead, he’s that fuckin bald._

_Vern’s so pissed. They’re trying to pull eminent domain on his ass. Karma is great._

_Tim stole you some booze from the gov-crashed party. Come by tonight to get it._

_Jerry lost a bet, and nearly got arrested by government pushovers. Hope I see you at the bar._

The texts continued on, though all from a generally government-themed vein. Darcy’s sleep-addled mind wasn’t sure how to immediately address the seven different people vying for her attention. So, she ignored them, got her morning coffee, ignored Jane and Erik, got sluggishly ready for the day, and stared longingly at the calendar marked with her surgery appointment.

Then Darcy came back to earth, waded through Jane’s hurricane of notes, attempted to organize the science workspaces, and spent more of the early afternoon managing her stocks.

And the profits Darcy was making were insanely great. Who knew the buy-sell value of clean energy shares would be so good this year? She didn’t even need to hack her way to a few extra zeros, what with the way the market was booming. The woman also took a little too much pleasure in buying enough Stark Industries stocks to be two shares short of having a Board seat at the company. She’d been taunting their investors for four straight years now. Part of her wondered what Tony Stark and the infamous CEO Pepper Potts thought about her…

Not that Darcy actually used her real name. Like all the other money-related things in her life, nothing was under her real-world record. The only money she had under her real name was the birthday money her mother deposited in her personal account once per year.

Hell, maybe after the surgery and she was done with school, she’d hack her way into becoming Mr. Frederick Bennatine Darcy. Anonymously, she’d—err, _he’d_ —gift her mother the funds necessary to renovate the old house in Stockton, or buy her a nice place in Carmichael. Become a rich millionaire that influenced Stark Industries, meet the economic powerhouses of her time, eat fancy food. Own three servals in a state where it was illegal just so she could continue to give state law a middle finger. Make jokes about her fake-turned-real name in correlation to Jane Austen novels.

She really loved fantasizing strange futures with her hacker money that resulted in her mother leaving Stockton.

Until, of course, Erik and Jane hit a new impasse. And, included in that impasse, were more notes to process. The stocks and wild daydreams were put on hold.

“You don’t think this is just a magnetic storm, do you?” Erik questioned.

“Look, the lensing around these edges! It’s characteristic of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge!”

Darcy, in her exasperation at plucking papers out of strange places and trying to follow the conversation, blurted out, “A what?”

Erik made a face, remembering that his protégé’s intern was unfortunately not a science major, and proceeded to explain. “The Bridge is a theoretical connection between two different points in space-time—”

“It’s a wormhole,” Jane cut off, summarizing it in terms Darcy would better grasp.

“Oh, so like _Stargate SG-1_ , right? The Stargate, wormhole theoreticals? That kind of thing?”

The two scientists stared at her blankly. “It’s a science fiction TV show. Corny, but pretty cool. It had a wormhole device that the main characters used to hop-skip between planets.”

Jane slowly nodded. “Essentially. Erik, look.” She turned to her mentor, pulling out random papers from a pile Darcy had just organized. “What do you see?”

At that point, Darcy tuned Jane out. Instead, she took the notes she had just recently “harvested” and dumped them at her desk, not long before printing out photo images that Erik had requested. The man liked to see visuals more than he liked to read through reams upon reams of data. Darcy could get behind that, and it helped her better understand just what she was helping Jane to discover. The last two pictures, printed out in a mix of creamy white and rusty red, were gathered and pinned up on the standing cork board in the lab. The California girl had fun using the star-shaped push pins she bought, smiling at the inside joke. Jane loved them, though she tried to hide it.

But the longer she stared at the push pins, the more Darcy noticed about the two recently printed images. They were admittedly murky, taken by Jane’s camcorder and then run through various types of thermal interpreter programs, but there was something off about the second one.

The intern poked the photo with a gunmetal nail, vaguely tracing at one of the messy red blotches. _A leg, another leg, a lump, an arm, a head…_

“Dudes, you gotta’ see this!”

Jane and Erik strolled over, staring at the images briefly in confusion.

“That’s impossible,” Selvig muttered.

Darcy, however, was already grabbing the car keys and throwing her favorite knit hat on. She unhooked her taser from its charging dock, grabbed her bag, and turned to Jane.

“Ready to go pick up your evidence?”

* * *

Thor was just as beefy as Darcy expected. His adonis belt was so severe, and his biceps were so veined, part of her wondered what would happen if she poked him with a needle.

_Would he pop like an inflatable sex doll?_

Ironically, Darcy technically already did that with her taser. He did not burst like cheap plastic, thankfully. Either way, the _alien dude_ wore Jane’s ex-boyfriend's clothes better than the ex-boyfriend did. His muscled pecs also jostled with each heavy step he took.

_Lord, he needs to put that shirt on before I drool a waterfall on Janey’s notes._

Not that she needed to worry about drooling, seeing as Jane was doing all the drooling for her. It was actually somewhat funny, with how spritely Jane was and how overwhelmingly huge Thor stood in contrast. The best thing Darcy could compare it to would be Mr. Urquidez’ chihuahua being eyed by Jezzie’s mutt of a Rottweiler. The blonde did the same fascinated head canting too, as if to further prove the intern’s point. Jane, overflowing with science questions and apparently long-repressed sexual frustration, could barely get out anything coherently English. Or awkwardly babble about the ex-boyfriend, the infamous Blake, M.D, who left behind those clothes.

Darcy thus decided to be the first to speak in understandable tongues. “Sorry I tased you, dude.”

Thor glanced her way, those eerie electric blue eyes of his staring at her in a way that made her feel he already passed judgement on her. Then his eyes drifted lower, and lower, and went back to her face with the slightest smirk.

Darcy was no longer impressed by the alien beefcake and all that he implied.

“Thanks for noticing my boobs, buddy. Treasure the sight while you can, since they’re going goodbye in less than three weeks.”

Then he blinked, and looked mildly perturbed. The smirk was wiped from his visage, and his shoulders dropped into a different position. He looked disarmed, if Darcy had to put a label on his behavior. His mouth was even slightly parted.

“You will become an _Ergi_? Willingly?”

Darcy furrowed her brow, and the scientists watched the interaction with no small amount of complete horror. Selvig especially. The intern was off the reservation with the current topic of conversation.

“I don’t know what that means, dude.”

“It means feminine man,” he answered plainly, though the look in his eye was strange. “Yet you are no sorcerer like my brother.”

“Well then, I guess yes? Minus the magic?” She wasn’t sure if Ergi was a derogatory term, or even a term that paralleled being a trans individual. Her reasons for it were also complicated, what with being both for health reasons and for her body dysphoria. It wasn’t completely gender-related, or sex-related. It was just Darcy Problems, in her mind.

Somehow, telling Thor about it seemed to change him. And, actually have him pay attention to her.

_Is he comfortable now because I remind him of his brother? Or something else? Is his brother a trans woman? I really didn’t take enough psychology classes to figure this out._

“This mortal form has grown weak,” he stated somewhat imperiously, but also very calmly. “I am in need of sustenance.”

“Uh,” Darcy glanced at Jane, who gave her an equally uncertain look, “Sure. Lemme’ throw something together.”

There was no reason to go out to eat. Darcy, because of her Jane-catering attempts, now had a constant stockpile of food in the lab kitchen. Cooking up a big mass of pasta for a big mass of a guy wasn’t at all impossible. She, admittedly, was a serious carbovore. Bread, noodles, biscuits, muffins, pancakes, waffles… anything that involved some kind of starch/carbohydrate was her favorite. Darcy hoped her love for carbs would extend to Thor, and that one huge pot full of pasta drowned in spiced Italian tomato sauce out of a jar would somehow engender passable relations with the Norse Gods. Who knows? If he turned out to be the real deal, she’d probably convert to Norse Paganism and worship his ass.

_Literally. His ass is tighter than a stretched Trojan condom._

Once the pasta was finished and mixed together, Darcy decided to err on the side of caution and give the big lug of alien flesh the biggest serving bowl from the cabinet. And then dump enough pasta to make a miniature noodle-sculpture of Mount Doom. Plus a knife and fork on the sides, because manners. Three other bowls, more reasonably sized, were served for the rest of them. Coffee mugs were distributed to sit next to four differing bowls.

“Many thanks,” he said, finally remembering what it meant to be a guest. Food seemed to relax him even more. He kept looking at her though, as if expecting something.

It took her a moment to realize he was waiting for her name. “Darcy, Darcy Ann Lewis.”

He nodded his head, “Well met, Lady Darcy.”

Jane and Erik looked on like they were watching a rare encounter on Animal Planet of a mountain lion making friends with a baby river turtle. Darcy didn’t have anything to say, beyond that she seemed to have successfully introduced a possible Norse God to Italian cuisine. He was scarfing it down with heavy-handed fork shoveling and no apparent need to immediately swallow. Or breathe. And the serving bowl she gave him? It was something Darcy normally used to mix ingredients for cookies. She kinda’ lied; it wasn’t an actual serving bowl. Only for technicalities, really. It served this guy.

But the peace didn’t last, because apparently he loved Darcy’s coffee brew so much that it translated into breaking _one of her favorite mugs_.

“ANOTHER!” he called, following the death of a 24-ounce ceramic mug with the phrase _eat a giant bag of dicks_ scrawled across its side in calligraphy.

“What the fuck?!” She yelled, almost knocking her bowl of near-gone pasta on the kitchen floor while the scientists flinched and shrank away from the alien’s act of violence against ceramics. “That was a mug I’ve had since sophomore year of college!”

Thor looked at her confused but cocky as ever. “I enjoyed the drink. Should I not show my satisfaction?”

“You do not express your enjoyment of beverages by breaking personal possessions!” Darcy yelled, before reflexively smacking him in the head. “Possible Norse God or not, I will kick you out of here _on your ass_ if _you pull this shit again!_ ”

The hunk of muscle looked shocked, blinking owlishly. His hair was slightly askew from the hit, and a red welt nearly the shape of her hand ghosted his temple. The young woman’s eyes widened.

_I just smacked an alien in reprimand. Oh fuck, please don’t zap me to dust..._

But then an overbright smile, wider than a seventeen-inch deep dish pizza, overtook the alien’s face. “The _Ergi_ has bite! A little mortal warrior is in our midst,” he mused, before absently getting up from his place at the kitchen counter and actually _picking up pieces of the broken mug_.

Darcy did what she did best: said it how she saw it.

“You’re fuckin’ wierd, blondie.”

The possible Norse God shrugged his shoulders uncaringly, hands full of ceramic shards, arrogant despite doing a reasonably nice deed. Eventually, Jane tried to engage Thor in a conversation on how he ended up in the middle of the desert. Erik watched skeptically with some minor interjections. Darcy ensured the ceramic shards ended up safely disposed, and cleared away their pasta meal. Idly, being something of a background character in the scheme of things, she checked her phone.

Her very bizarre text messages looked up at her from the screen of her blackberry, numerous and peculiar in their contents.

_The gringos are at their shit again. Bobby wanted to crash their party for the booze._

That wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, in terms of content. All the crazy redneck hicks in Puente Antiguo were always starting shit, or doing stupid shit. There were days when she and her Native friends would sit in the back of a pickup, drinking a beer, and watching the ten-gallon nutbars try to fix their supposedly broken car. When, of course, the actual problem with the automobile was that the battery was simply dead.

_Have you seen the trucks driving off today, D? Have you heard why are they all heading to Vern’s plot?_

Vern was short for Vernon, and Vernon Arnold Bradley III was the weirdest and cockiest southwestern cattle rancher in a thirty mile radius. Most of the hicks in town worked for him on his ranch, and the rest generally worked for his cousin, Harold “Harry” Kennedy Wells. Between the two of them, they owned most of the dead-ass dirt near and around Puente Antiguo. That, and Vern was known for his famous grill parties. Meat right off the heifer, beer for days, Okie-style hospitality. It wasn’t strange to hear he was throwing something on his plot, but it also was. He always threw his BBQ-off’s with a two-week warning, so the whole town could come. What was up with Vern?

_Tim came to the bar and said there’s a good old fashioned hoedown happening on Vern’s land. You gonna come?_

Hoedown? Was there illegal bull riding competitions going on or something? She didn’t really get New Mexico-Okie lingo very well. She was too damn City-Californian for it all.

_One of the ranchers found a hammer on his plot—_

_—He can’t move it—_

_―Dude, the government just whipped out a warrant on Vern—_

_—THE MEN IN BLACK ARE HERE―_

_―You should see this suit, D—_

_—Vern’s so pissed. They’re trying to pull eminent domain on his ass—_

“Hey Thor,” Darcy spoke aloud, turning to the blond bulk of an alien.

He looked over at her with his inhuman blue eyes. “Yes?”

“Are you looking for a hammer? Because I think our government just eminent domain’d part of Vernon Bradley’s cattle ranch because they found an immovable object of unknown origin early this morning.”

The expression on his face was all the answer Darcy needed.


End file.
